New Amtrak Service Proves That Even Slow-Ass Trains Can Beat The Airlines
Trains! They’re too slow, goes the refrain. Too old-fashioned, or too expensive in the case of their high-speed brethren. And yet, run the numbers, and you’ll find that Americans actually want trains, and want them bad. Even the slow ones are packing up with passengers!
Amtrak’s new Borealis service is a quality example. On the surface, it isn’t particularly exceptional. It’s a state-sponsored intercity train service between Chicago, Illinois and Saint Paul, Minnesota, passing Milwaukee on the way. It runs once daily in each direction, with an average travel time of 7 hours and 20 minutes. It’s a 411 miles run that operates at an average of 54 mph. Absolutely nothing special.
The Borealis is so much slower than air travel, you’d be forgiven for assuming nobody is getting on board. And yet, as Twitter account Hot Rails figured out, this thing is taking a chunk out of the airlines anyway! It’s early days yet—but these numbers are raising eyebrows.
Conventional Wisdom Is Anything But
In its first ten days of service, the new @Amtrak Borealis service between Chicago and Minneapolis/St Paul hit a market share of over 15% against airlines; there are typically 25 flights in each direction each day between the two cities. https://t.co/LAsFpgInM6 pic.twitter.com/vkqHtIyRcO
— Hot Rails — ????/acc (@hot_rails) July 1, 2024
The data comes to us from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, which reported an average of 604 riders a day in the first 10 days of the service’s operation. Even with 38.5% of the riders only travelling to stations on the Chicago to Milwaukee stretch, plenty of riders were relying on the train to get from Chicago to Minneapolis/St Paul.
As Hot Rails explains, we can compare those numbers to the most recent domestic air travel data from the US Department of Transport. The DoT records an average of 2019 passengers per day flying between Chicago and Minneapolis/St Paul. Even cutting out the 38.5% of shorter-haul riders, that suggests the train is hauling somewhere around 18% of the daily passenger total between the two cities.
To figure it a simpler way, if those 604 passengers all caught flights, it’d take four Airbus A320s to carry them all. Two trains replacing four flights is a win, environmentally speaking.
It’s a result that might feel strange at first glance. That’s a lot of people choosing not to take the plane, which would cover the same distance in maybe an hour. Of course, airport transfers, security, and all the rest does add to the pain, but the plane still comes out much faster than the train ride at over 7 hours.
Conventional wisdom is that rail links are only competitive with air travel over shorter distances. One graph is commonly bandied around, which states that high-speed rail is only competitive out to distances of 500 miles or so. Conventional rail, being much slower, doesn’t get a look in. But that graph assumes that high-speed rail is only “better” if it’s faster than air travel on a door-to-door basis. As the Borealis service shows us, people will readily choose the train in great numbers, whether or not it’s faster than air.
In fact, that graph is a bastardization of a graph from a British study published in 2004. The original was solely used to compare travel time between regular rail, high-speed rail, and air travel. It shows us that even slow conventional rail can beat air travel on door-to-door travel time for distances of 250 miles or less. It also doesn’t assume that speed is everything to the customer.
I’ve just published a new review of global air-rail market share, with over 200 datapoints for 133 unique city-pairs across 5 continents, demonstrating that rail begins to capture significant market share at travel times below 5-6 hours (not 3 hours as often claimed).
Short ???? pic.twitter.com/GxRo25Ilrw
— Hot Rails — ????/acc (@hot_rails) April 9, 2024
Indeed, as Hot Rails explains, the relationship between travel time and railway market share is more of a curve. When rail travel times sink beneath 5 hours, the trains see a rapid increase in market share versus airlines. This is based on data from city pairs all over the world. In Europe, the Paris to Brussels rail connection boasts 97.7% market share, with a travel time of under 1.4 hours. Training from Beijing to Wuhan takes a lot longer at 5.3 hours, but it scored a 52% market share of passengers in 2015 data. The train might not win 100% of travellers in that case, but it’s still diverting a ton of people away from air travel.
Beijing to Shanghai is a particularly great example, though, for how faster travel times boost rail market share. The rail route had 36% market share in 2000, with a travel time of 14 hours. By 2005, the travel time was just 12 hours, and market share inched up to 38%. In 2012, at under 6 hours, rail had 43% of the market. Fast forward to 2019, and the journey took just 4.3 hours. The market share versus air? A whopping 73%!
Longer routes can do well in some cases. Berlin to Stockholm takes 15 hours by train, but still scored 13.5% market shaer in 2022. However, underinvestment and ticket affordability can have more of an impact on these routes. Australia’s Adelaide to Melbourne route took almost 13 hours in 1971, but held 29% market share because planes were expensive. In today’s era of cheap air travel, the same rail route has just 1.1% of the market share, even though it only takes 10.5 hours by train today.
Ultimately, what we’re seeing with the Borealis service is a vote of confidence for rail. In this city pair alone, hundreds of Americans are voting with their feet every day, and they’re choosing to ride the Amtrak instead of getting on a plane. Even though it’s slow!
Based on the data above, it seems likely a great deal more passengers would choose trains if the route was even just a little faster. You don’t even have to build full-on high-speed rail to get punters on trains. Even just bumping a service from 50 mph to 100 mph can be enough to slash travel times and attract more passengers. There are real cost-effective gains to be had on rail networks across America, just by learning these lessons.
A Personal Take
Few trains are considered cool, outside of the world of high-speed rail. In reality, though, customers are just looking to get from A to B. Even if a train is slow and unimpressive, it might still be quick enough to be an attractive option versus the Kafkaesque hell that is a modern domestic airport. Some people like to get to their destination without the long lines, invasive scanners, and handsy patdowns from the TSA.
As a car fan, and a plane fan, I’m also all-in on rail. There are things I like about driving, and there are things I like about flying. The former is interactive and a pleasure, the latter is fast. But riding high-speed rail across China blew my mind. Less fuss, comfortable seats, and they put a KFC in just about every station.
Heck, I’ve even caught night trains across Vietnam and seen the value there. They’re slow as wet week, but they’ll move you great distances while you’re sleeping—and you get a lie-flat bunk all to yourself for the price of a hot dinner. Trains can do things that planes just can’t.
the trains in Vietnam are slow and loud pic.twitter.com/QvAmvc773B
— Lewin S. Day (@rainbowdefault) June 3, 2024
It’s early days yet for the Borealis service, and it might only be hauling an average of 600 people a day. But it’s a glimpse, and perhaps a promising example of what trains can do when they’re properly put to work. Food for thought, bureaucrats!